Mickie James vs. Asuka Wasn’t The Original Plan For WWE NXT TakeOver

WWE NXT TakeOver: Toronto is less than a month away, and one of the top matches on the show features former WWE Women’s champion Mickie James returning to the company for the first time since 2010 to challenge undefeated NXT Women’s champion Asuka. However, this match wasn’t the original plan for the show.

As it turns out, WWE originally wanted to bring WWE Hall of Famer Trish Stratus out of retirement for the match on November 19th, since Trish would be a hometown favorite as a Toronto native. However, Trish is currently expecting her second child, so WWE had to find another well-loved female babyface for Asuka to beat. The idea would be to get Asuka heel heat by having her beat the crowd favorite in her hometown, which would help Ember Moon to come across as a strong babyface for her inevitable title match with Asuka. While Ember Moon is over as a babyface, she isn’t over to the level of Asuka, and it illustrates the uphill nature of WWE’s battle: getting Asuka any kind of heel heat has been difficult for WWE, because the Full Sail crowd simply respects her too much to really boo her. So this is the company’s attempt to turn that around and build up Asuka as an unbeatable heel, in order to build up a babyface to finally defeat her.

Source: WWE.com

WWE has officially confirmed that the match at TakeOver between Mickie James and Asuka will be a title match, but there is yet to be any word on whether or not Mickie will be sticking around after the TakeOver special. For now, it’s looking like a one-match spot, but she could be brought in for tapings to do a brief program. If anything, it could help get other heels, like Billie Kay and Peyton Royce, some decent heat. And it could help boost Mickie’s profile for a Hall of Fame induction on Wrestlemania weekend this year, since WWE likes to have at least one female inductee every year.